William Alexander Percy
William Alexander Percy (May 14, 1885 - January 21, 1942), was an American poet, lawyer, and planter. His autobiography Lanterns on the Levee (Knopf 1941) became a bestseller. In a largely Protestant state, the younger Percy championed the Roman Catholicism of his French mother. Life Percy was born to Camille (a French Catholic) and LeRoy Percy, of the planter class in Mississippi, and grew up in Greenville, Mississippi, on the big river. His father was elected in 1910 as the last United States Senator from Mississippi elected by the legislature. As an attorney and planter with 20,000 acres under cultivation for cotton, William Percy was very influential in the state Episcopal University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, a postbellum tradition in his family. He spent a year in Paris before going to Harvard for a law degree. After returning to Greenville, Percy joined his father's firm in the practice of law. During World War I, Percy joined the Commission for Relief in Belgium in November 1916. He served in Belgium as a delegate until the withdrawal of American personnel upon the U.S. declaration of war in April 1917. He then served in the US Army, earning the rank of Captain and the Croix de Guerre .Percy, William Alexander, Willam A. Percy, WilliamAPercy.com. Web, Apr. 1, 2013. A friend of Herbert Hoover from the Belgium Relief Effort during the early years of World War I, Percy was put in charge of relief during the great Mississippi flood of 1927, when an area larger than all New England (minus Maine) was inundated in the spring. During the flood, thousands of blacks fleeing farms and plantations under water sought refuge on the levee in Greenville. Percy believed that the refugees needed to be evacuated to Vicksburg to receive better care and food, and arranged for ships to prepare to remove them. But, local planters, including Percy's father, a forceful former US senator, opposed this decision. They worried that if the black workers were removed from the area, they would never return. To Percy's dismay, the relief committee voted unanimously not to relocate the black residents, and the ships left Greenville empty. After conditions on the levee deteriorated, Percy was strongly criticized in the national press. Percy continued to head the relief effort for months until the floodwaters had receded sufficiently that residents could return to their homes. He later resigned and left for a trip to Japan the following day.Biography: Will Percy, The American Experience, PBS, Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Web, Apr. 1, 2012. From 1925 to 1932, Percy edited the Yale Younger Poets series, the 1st of its kind in the country. He also published 4 collectionss of poetry with Yale University Press. A Southern man of letters, Percy befriended many fellow writers, Southern, Northern and European, including William Faulkner. He socialized with Langston Hughes and other people in and about the Harlem Renaissance. Percy was a sort of godfather to the Fugitives at Vanderbilt, or Southern Agrarians (as John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate and Robert Penn Warren were often called). Percy's family was plagued with suicides, including his first cousin LeRoy Pratt Percy and possibly his wife Phinizy, who died in an auto accident. William adopted his cousin's children, Walker, LeRoy (Roy) and Phinizy (Phin) Percy, after they were orphaned. As an adult, Roy married Sarah Hunt Farish, the daughter of Will Percy's law partner, Hazlewood Power Farish. He took charge of the Percy family plantation, Trail Lake. Phin married and moved to New Orleans to practice law. Percy's most well-known work is his memoir, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son (Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1941). His other works include the text of "They Cast Their Nets in Galilee," which is included in the Episcopal Hymnal (1982) (Hymn 661), and his Collected Poems (Knopf 1943). He also had a piece published under the name A.W. Percy in Men and Boys, an anonymous anthology of Uranian poetry (New York, 1934). Recognition The William Alexander Percy Library at 341 Main Street, Greenville, Mississippi is named for him. Publications Poetry *''Sappho in Levkas, and other poems. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1915. *In April Once'' New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1920. *''Enzio's Kingdom, and other poems''. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1924. *''Selected Poems''. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1930; London: H. Milford, 1930. *''Of Silence and of Stars''(edited by Anne Stokes). Greenville, MS: Levee Press, 1934.William Alexander Percy (1885-1942), Strangers to Us All: Lawyers and Poetry, College of Law, West Virginia University. Web, Apr. 1, 2013. *''Collected Poems''. New York: Knopf, 1943. Non-fiction *''Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son.'' New York: Knopf, 1941; Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1984. *''Seewanee''. New York: F.C. Bell, 1962. Edited *Arthur O'Shaughnessy, Poems. ''New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1923. Anthologized *"Three Wood Songs," "The Gleam," and "Chips," in ''Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1926 and Yearbook of American Poetry (edited by William Stanley Braithwaite). Boston: B.J. Brimmer Company, 1926, pp, 330-333. *''Mississippi Writers'' (edited by Dorothy Abbott). Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1991. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:William Alexander Percy, WorldCat, OCLC, Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Apr. 1, 2013. See also *List of U.S. poets References *Baker, Lewis (1983) The Percys of Mississippi: Politics and Literature in the New South. Louisiana State University Press. *Barry, John (1998) Rising Tide. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-84002-2 *Kirwan, Albert Dennis (1964) The Revolt of the Rednecks. P. Smith. *Percy, William Alexander (1941) Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a planter's son. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-8071-0072-2; with introduction by Walker Percy, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1973. *Wyatt-Brown, Bertram (1994) The House of Percy: Honor, Melancholy, and Imagination in a Southern Family. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-510982-1 Fonds *William Alexander Percy Collection (MUM00361) at the University of Mississippi Department of Archives and Special Collections. Notes External links ;Poems *"Overtones" *William Alexander Percy at PoemHunter (2 poems) ;Books *William Alexander Percy at Amazon.com ;About *Percy, William Alexander Official website *Biography: Will Percy, The American Experience - Percy bio and his participation in events after the Mississippi Flood of 1927 Category:1885 births Category:1942 deaths Category:People from Greenville, Mississippi Category:Writers from Mississippi Category:American poets Category:Gay writers Category:LGBT writers from the United States Category:Sewanee: The University of the South alumni Category:Harvard Law School alumni Category:United States Army officers Category:American military personnel of World War I Category:American memoirists Category:20th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets